Friends, we have a huge opportunity to help prevent sexual violence. HB 2657 will invest $3 million in dedicated funding source to ensure greater capacity for community-based non-profits, culturally specific, and tribal programs to implement violence prevention education in K-12 and other community settings.

This funding is needed so more young Oregonians can have safe, healthy relationships. It’s up to all of us to make sure Oregon legislators know we want this investment in sexual violence prevention.

Please email your State legislators. You can personalize the message, if you like, but you don’t have to personalize it. If you do, please don’t disclose confidential information because this email will be part of the public record.

Sexual violence is preventable. We all have a role in supporting safe, healthy relationships.

Thank you for supporting sexual violence prevention!

This Thursday (March 14) is an important day for survivors of sexual and domestic violence in Oregon.

We need your help to let the legislature know Oregonians take domestic and sexual violence seriously.  Two pieces of legislation need your time and attention.  It won’t take long, but the impact will be enormous.

1) SCR 25, declaring the legislature’s support for survivors of sexual violence and pledging to create an Oregon that is safe for all survivors, is scheduled for a final Senate vote in the morning of the 14th.

2) The Public Safety budget committee will consider a $10M increase funding for lifesaving domestic and sexual violence services that same afternoon.

Please contact your State Legislators.  You can personalize the message, if you like, but you don’t have to personalize it.  If you do, please don’t disclose confidential information because this email will be part of the public record.

Survivors, advocates, and allies, let’s turn up the volume and ask Oregon’s leaders to double down on their support for survivors!

Stable housing is important for people to achieve safety. Survivors of sexual and domestic violence are particularly vulnerable to displacement through no-cause evictions or extreme rent increases. Survivors of sexual and domestic violence, as well as people of color, seniors, people with disabilities, and people with low incomes, are disproportionately impacted when landlords exploit the eviction process. SB 608 provides greater safety and stability to Oregon renters.

We need you to email your State Senator to say you want them to vote YES on SB 608.

Can we count on you to take action today? Just click “Take Action” and we’ll walk you through the quick, easy process.

OAASIS was proud to be one of the 308 organizations around the country that came together behind the #DearWorld call for change to end sexual violence and harassment. We’re exctied to see how the #DearWorld call has led to #20Statesby2020–a campaign calling on state leadership to create meaningful change preventing sexual violence in 20 states by 2020.

Let’s help Oregon be one of those states! Almost 1/3rd of Oregon legislators signed on to the national pledge. This is a great time to thank the legislators who signed the pledge and ask them to create meaningful change this legislative session. The changes we’re promoting didn’t come from a national group; the changes arose from hundreds of survivors and advocates across Oregon. Survivors and advocates were clear about the changes they want most: increased access to lifesaving survivor services; investing in sexual violence prevention; and supporting safe, stable housing.

Will you join us by saying thank you and asking for change? It only takes about a minute and is an effective way to show legislators that we care about survivors.

Please take action today! Thank you for supporting survivors!

On December 8^th, Oregon’s Council on Court Procedures (COCP) will be meeting to vote on a change to Rule 16 to continue to allow pseudonyms (like “Jane Doe”) to be used in civil cases.  This rule would allow survivors of sexual violence to seek civil justice without having to share their identities with the whole world (which carries with it the risk of retaliation and harassment from abusive people, facilitators of abuse, and their supporters).

Why are pseudonyms important? Many people don’t disclose abuse because they feel ashamed and are afraid of retaliation and harassment for speaking out. Providing survivors the option to use a pseudonym on civil court documents allows survivors to have greater safety and confidentialit

We need you to email the Council on Court Procedures to say you want them to vote to allow pseudonyms.

Can we count on you to take action today?

Sexual abuse thrives in the shadows of secrecy. That’s why we oppose Measure 105.

Over 30 years ago, Oregon passed the nation’s first sanctuary state law, with broad bipartisan support. The law has helped countless Oregon survivors access safety and support services without fear of federal immigration consequences. But this law’s future is in jeopardy: Measure 105 would overturn Oregon’s longstanding law and put survivors’ safety at risk.

Oregon’s current law protects survivors. It is important for survivors of sexual violence to access the justice system without fear of arrest, deportation, or racial profiling. When survivors fear the justice system, they are less safe, can miss out on essential trauma recovery services, and their voices are silenced.

Our communities are safer when local dollars are invested in local crime prevention and survivor services. Survivors need more access to services, not less. Measure 105 would funnel our local law enforcement toward responding to federal immigration issues, diverting local dollars away from critical services that people need in times of crisis.

Measure 105 would create barriers for survivors, generate fear, and reduce public safety.

It’s up to all of us to decide what happens next. You—and other Oregon voters—will choose the outcome.

Let’s embody our values of standing up with—and for—people who have been harmed; building equity; recognizing people’s humanity; and counteracting the isolation that accompanies sexual abuse.

We hope you’ll join us in opposing Measure 105.

Art at the Intersection, a Mel Phillips piece

Remembering The Movement That Grooved The World    

Observing the youth reaction to the most recent high school mass murder in Florida—witnessing their raw anger and steely determination to act, to resist and push back against the all-or-nothing gun rights rhetoric in order to affect meaningful change in their schools and communities—this brings hope to my heart and a smile to my face.  Youth too often get a bad rap, usually perceived as spoiled self-centered, disinterested game junkies wired into the Internet and unplugged from daily reality.  But now, seeing them marching in the streets, hearing their raised voices ringing throughout the halls of justice, speaking their righteous truth to the truculent powers-that-be, one must surely readjust any hazy, negative optics cast on this vital, maturing citizenry.

Youth rock!

When young people find a common purpose and unite around a singular goal, and join as a seamless collective, more often than not, good things follow.  Forged by the fire of personal tragedy, I see in these newly wrought activists, advocates and peacemakers all the best of humanity: empathy, selflessness, courage, and a passion for good.   We all should be uplifted by their tenacity, and should support and encourage them to keep it up.  These kids and young adults are fine models of what action, activism and civic responsibility looks like.

Movements, like many things, come in rotations and cycles; usually each generation or so, something historic comes to pass.  Maybe this youth push for responsible gun laws will be the moonrise that turns the tide on gun reform in this country.  Their impact on that juggernaut remains to be seen, but I sure admire their willpower and fire.  The last big American youth uprising like this present one was the Hip-Hop revolution of the late 1970s and 80s.  After decades of being unheard and overlooked by the mainstream, undervalued by corporate gatekeepers, and essentially invisible to politicians’ broader vision, young Americans on both coasts—predominantly black and brown urban kids— collected to ignite a riot of rambunctious creativity that made the nation look up and take notice.

Street art is the heartbeat of many communities of color.  If you want to tap into the flow of community relations, graffiti renders the true pulse of a neighborhood.   A cruise around a block is revealing; if bright murals, citizen sculpture and wall art outnumber tags and slashes, this reflects a neighborly sense of pride.  But reverse these trends and typically there is more urban decay and youth frustration.  Urgent graffiti resembles a hospital EKG, which should have been the first sign of a swelling youth outburst.  It was an inescapable, nationwide diffusion of spray painted gripes plastering the cityscapes.  Graffiti—the rebel’s monogram—is street talk, the cool cryptic lingo of counterculture, created of the people, by the people and for the people.  Graffiti is as ancient as written language and maybe the purest form of social commentary.

By the late 1970s, clearly the ancient scripture was already on the walls.  Almost anyone caring to notice would have easily deciphered the angst imbedded in all those dark indelible memos, queries and admonitions scribed in magic marker, Krylon and Rustoleum.  Adolescent distemper was rampant and something was up; the youth fringe was agitated and tense.  What was up: violent crime in US cities and suburbs was up; youth unemployment was up as well as school dropout rates, teen pregnancy and drug use, STDs, police brutality and juvenile incarceration, just to name a few headlines of the times.  Youth in America were fed up with being ignored, and from the Burroughs of New York to the inner cities of Los Angeles, the writing was indeed on the walls as well as buildings, subway cars, city buses, park benches, storefronts, sidewalks and school yards everywhere—the scrawl and sprawl of youth discontent.

Armed with rapid-fire graffiti, fat strips of junked cardboard, enormous boom-boxes, artistic grit, fearless natural talent and grand ideas, these fiery upstarts used original melodies and acrobatic choreography as messaging tools, ultimately reversing their collective void into one coherent voice and reshaping their misery into music with a mission.  Today that music and style is called Hip-Hop.  Hip-Hop is the synthesis of many creative forms.  Its stylistic diversity and social potency is what makes Hip-Hop such an exciting and universal mode of expression.  Of course these days nearly every advanced population on Earth is familiar with and/or uses elements of Hip-Hop culture, appropriating its musical style or clothing fashion to express themselves and tell their own narratives.  Hip-Hop is a world phenomenon and it all began right here in America’s toughest inner cities.

B-boys and B-girls became the living breathing moving spirit of Hip-Hop and breakdancing found its passionate choreographic embodiment.  This aggressive dance style had never been seen before, a kind of non-violent skirmish where dancing replaced gang banging and bloodshed.  It is a battle of style and substance, and it was precisely this combative aspect that captivated audiences everywhere.  These were breathtaking dance rituals, full-tilt, no holds barred incredibly physical feats of uncharted eye-popping choreography.  Also at that instant Hip-Hop’s musical pioneers—DJs and MCs—sprang up from this same subterranean fray.  These bass-beat prodigies and Rap impresarios spun vinyl gold and spat incredible melodic verses abut daily life on the mean streets in the big city.

Rappers created the literary chronicles of modern Hip-Hop.  They wrote old stories anew and spoke innovative poetry in novel measures and meters.  These young outsiders wrote the truths, the myths and fables, fairy tales and the legends of a generation.  The songs were amazing, each cut wholly informed by life experience, elevated by sentient intelligent lyrics that, though specific to its creators’ cultural perspectives, still today speak lucidly to the larger world.  Adding to the mix, genius DJs invented funky ill master beats that superpowered the lyrics, drove the groove, and energized the party atmosphere.

Together break dancers, rappers and DJs crafted tight dance routines and astonishing moves, rapped clever, timeless, homegrown stories and ballads that rung with reality, acknowledgement and a sense of pride to their neighborhoods and homies.  Hip-Hop gave voice to their nearly invisible American existence.  Through music and dance, they would wage war on each other and the rest of the world.  There was competition in the performances and lyrical challenges and battles of the beats; there were slamming verses and ecstatic crushing crowds but no spilled blood.  The war was in the words, and those spinning wheels of wax shifting, scrunching, slicing and ripping old melodies into monster mashes.  Especially, the war was in the battle dances—the spins, twists, turns, flips, hits, pops, locks, bumps, freezes, ticks, slides, drops, shocks, windmills, breakdowns and moonwalks—all techniques of the art form as well as metaphors for our basic human conditions.   Proudly breaking rules, breaking away, breaking down constructs, breaking tradition, breaking barriers, this is the legacy of American Hip-Hop culture.

See what can happen when the explosive ingredients of restive angst and youthful vigor combine?  Who knew way back then that one day these restless rogues would transform their melancholy into an upbeat mainstream movement that would go on to create a modern entertainment genre and capture the world’s attention, dominate the popular music industry, and change the face of American Pop culture forever?  Almost no one.  And why?  At first very few people took these New Jack prophets seriously, mostly because they were teenagers.  The wider public saw Hip-Hop as a national nuisance rather than a nuanced cultural renaissance led by youth of the pan-African and Latinex diaspora.  Basically, it was hard for people to see beyond Hip-Hoppers’ ages, ethnicities, skin tones, or the ill-fitted attire, or their take-no-shit attitudes, or their inventive street savvy lexicon.  To most folks, these kids didn’t look like real singers and performers like on the Mickey Mouse Club.  Few people were prepared for Disney going dope.  With their gritty lyrics, mashy beats, torn clothes and grand marquee haircuts etched with nicknames, neighborhoods, symbols and words of peace or protest, these young messengers looked ready to revolt.  Frankly, many people were afraid of these black and brown hipsters and their communal confabs in open spaces.  Many cities, in attempts to quell rising fears in the greater public, cracked down on street art; rapping and breakdancing were banned in parks and other public places.  Moreover, Rap artists and DJs were viewed as inferior musicians, and so-called national music critics gave the melodies thumbs down.  Regardless, the groove and the movement persevered and soon Pop music’s biggest heavyweight producers took the deep dive into Rap music, creating the massive ultra moneymaker we know today.

At its core, Hip-Hop is the voice of the collective soul of America’s urban Afro-Hispanic consciousness.  Great Hip-Hop has the power to compel the body, shift the mind, and elevate the senses, and in this 21st century it is the ultimate expression for orating the rich experiences of people of color.  Irrepressible Hip-Hop stands alone as transformative modern art and is now in league with all its counterparts of opera, ballet, literature and film.  Point in fact; Broadway’s mega-smash musical stage play “Hamilton” says it all.      The truth remains self-evident, Hip-Hop is too legit to quit, and here to stay.

In less than a decade, ethnic youth in America turned a niche cult into a national culture.  From a ripple of rebellion to a tidal wave of global notoriety, this is the humble genesis and worldwide influence of the Hip-Hop revolution.  It was a movement that concocted a brave new artistic convention, completely captured the entire world’s attention, delivered a multi-gazillion dollar platform to the entertainment industry, as well as directly influencing the spectrum of fashion, style and design.  It could happen again, a major youth revolution.  Probably it won’t look like Hip-Hop, but it doesn’t have to.  The magical thing about movements is they usually have a way of manifesting something previously unimagined, something unbelievable, something ingenious and a thing never before seen or conceived.  Age is irrelevant where good cause work is concerned.  What matters most in peace work is not age but agenda.

To the nation’s young change agents, stay on point and keep your message in the public forefront and you have a fighting chance to transform your lungpower into law power.  You already have the solid backing of at least 75% of the US populace.  We honor you and believe in you and your cause.  Keep marching, keep yelling, keep fighting and keep looking out for each other.  Never stop learning.  And most importantly, endeavor to be the leaders you would follow.  I cannot wait to see the surprises your current and continued efforts will bring.

“I’m 23 years old. I might just be my mother’s child, but in all reality, I’m everybody’s child.  Nobody raised me; I was raised in this society.”

Tupac Shakur

Art at the Intersection, a Mel Phillips piece

W.E.B. DuBois And the Art of Intellect

Note:  As a general 20^th century bad ass in the battle of the color line, this African American activist, writer, orator and vocal agitator smartly marshaled history, science and academia into the fray of international dialogue on racial injustice.  Mr. DuBois was a lifelong freedom fighter who did his part to help our nation continue to unravel the blanket of racism spread throughout this country, and for me a hero of my history.  I wrote this tribute article several years ago, and I pulled it from the archives and dusted it off to present it again for Black History Month.  Heroes never die.

W.E.B. DuBois And the Battle of The Color Line

His life is the groundwork upon which contemporary black American culture is anchored.  Much of the cultural richness black and brown Americans hold today is due largely to the amazing achievements of this one man.  His vast legacy conjures varying images for his familiars.  Few other Americans played a more prominent and dominant role in the first half of the twentieth century to restore the humanization of the Afro-American consciousness than William Edward Burghardt DuBois.

For nearly seven decades W.E.B. DuBois was the passionate voice of freedom for all disenfranchised Americans.  His public agitation and impassioned activism forced the country to face its slavery-born demons of oppression, racism, intolerance and injustice.  As a writer, free-thinker and militant public speaker, W.E.B. DuBois did more than any other person during the first half of the last century to completely dismantle the foundations of scientific racism upon which many societies relied to support atrocious national behavior, like caste and genocide.  He conducted vast research studies that not only shed new scientific light on American race relations, but also helped dispel long-held social myths about black people.  His work went far to revoke racial stigmas and stereotypes unduly ascribed to blacks long before slavery and far after Emancipation.  DuBois promulgated the idea of human dignity and equality for all.  The overall extent of his lifework reveals him as the premier leader, historian and cultural steward of black American tradition and heritage in the last one hundred years.   Few others come close.

Born in 1868 to an elite, prominent black family in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, W.E.B. DuBois attended integrated schools where he exhibited an intellect beyond his peers.  Graduating from high school early, and at the very top of his class, was just one of many academic firsts that DuBois would realize in his incredible lifetime.  After first receiving a baccalaureate degree in 1888 from Fisk University, DuBois entered Harvard University in 1890 to study philosophy.  While there he was an eminent member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity for black Americans.  In 1891 DuBois completed his master’s degree and soon became the first black man ever to receive a Harvard Ph.D.

While working on his doctoral thesis at Harvard, W.E.B. DuBois first conceived the idea of subjecting the issues of modern race relations to the rigors of scientific scrutiny.  The result, “The Suppression of the Slave Trade in America”, is acclaimed as arguably the most influential social science dissertation ever produced in any American university.  It later was published as the first volume in the Harvard Historical Series; he was only twenty-four years old.  White supremacist political, social and caste culture ideology was at its pinnacle when young Mr. DuBois began his academic and public pursuits.  His charge to deliver the message for racial equality would not be easy.  Between 1897 and 1914 Dubois conducted copious studies of black society in America, publishing sixteen research papers.  His intellect was impressive for its range, insight, meticulous detail, precision and innovation.

Recognizing that science and academia alone were insufficient vectors for social change, W.E.B. DuBois initiated and led many international mass movements.  In 1900 he helped organize the First Annual Pan-African Congress in Paris, France.  In 1905 he helped found the Niagara Movement, an early prototype of the NAACP which he would go on to co-found in 1909.  He also helped establish the Council on African Affairs, helped organize the First Universal Races Congress in London, England, was a founder of the World Peace Council, and a protester against the cold war.

W.E.B. DuBois was one of the twentieth century’s great intellectuals.  He challenged conventional American wisdom and Western ideology, and saw race in a global perspective.  DuBois published books and essays in magazines throughout the world.  He edited and wrote for a substantial number of periodicals all around the country.  He also contributed weekly columns to national newspapers.  As editor of the NAACP’s “The Crisis”, DuBois used the journal as the vehicle to deliver his blunt messages for social change.  But beyond that he also used the journal to promote the works of many young, bold progressive black writers like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and other brilliant new voices of the Harlem Renaissance.

In all DuBois produced over four thousand works of historical, cultural, literary, and humanitarian importance.  Alone, the sheer breadth of his social awareness and keen philosophy was enough to help push American social conscious toward more enlightened paths during the golden age of Reconstruction.  But even more the remarkable scope of his scholarship and literary work catalyzed the dramatic transformations in America’s race relations during the crucial infant stages of the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1963, after a lifetime as standard-bearer for human rights everywhere, W.E.B. DuBois renounced his American citizenship and moved to the African Republic of Ghana where he died a few months later.  He was 95.

Scholar.  Educator.  Scientist.  Historian.  Author.  Social activist.  Cultural pioneer.  Diplomat.  Freedom Fighter.  Revolutionary.  Philosopher.  Icon.  W.E.B. DuBois certainly was each of these things, all hallmarks of a great world leader.   Of course, he also had his flaws, philosophical inconsistencies and more than a few detractors.  Some often point to his inflammatory dialogue of the period and his radical oratory and repeated calls for black self-segregation, messages meant to rouse progressives, suffragettes, politicos and intellectuals against growing waves of intolerance, imperialism and inequality everywhere.  But in the end history speaks the truth loud and clear.   Imperfections aside, US history rightfully confirms W.E.B. DuBois as a true American patriot like no other.  But ask any grammar school kid in America who comes to mind when you say the words scholar, educator, freedom fighter, hero, historian, revolutionary, icon, and many American fourth-graders would instantly say Franklin or Revere or Washington or Lincoln.  Despite a life committed to academia while speaking truth to power, Mr. DuBois cannot earn the privilege of an easy perch on the tips of young minds and tongues.  Will it ever change?

W.E.B. DuBois fought for America all his life with all his mind and heart.  He waged a global war against inequality.  In the trenches of racial tyranny, he was a champion.  And in the ultimate civil rights conflict, at the cruel and indecent battle of the color line, the proud figure of William Edward Burghardt DuBois stands tall for the world to see.

Showing up for Racial Justice, a Kerry Naughton piece

When I was 13, I received one of the most important lessons of my life.

My brother was 19 and home for the summer from college. I absolutely adore my big brother–I did then and I do to this day. But when he was 19, he wasn’t necessarily making the smartest decisions. Knowing what we do about brain development, it wasn’t totally his fault. His prefrontal cortex wasn’t fully functional yet and, well, he was making some decisions that reflected that the logical part of his brain wasn’t fully engaged.

My brother was out drinking with friends one night and forgot to bring the key to our house with him. It was late and he didn’t want to ring the doorbell and wake our parents (and then get in trouble for being drunk). So he decided to break into the house. One of the kitchen windows was slightly open and my brother thought he would be able to shimmy it open more. But the window was higher than he could reach, so he found something to stand on so he could reach higher: a plastic bucket.

Unfortunately, only part of the window was located over solid ground. The rest was over a flight of outdoor concrete stairs leading down to the basement. My brother was standing on a plastic bucket, leaning over concrete stairs, trying to push open a window.

He fell down the stairs. Headfirst. And broke the bones around one of his eyes.

He of course then rang the doorbell, bruised and bleeding, and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors put metal plates around his eye to fuse the bones together again. My brother is fine now, but for a while we didn’t know if he’d retain the vision in that eye. It was a time of incredible pain for my brother and incredible stress for my family.

When my brother came home from the hospital, we invited the girl he was dating over for dinner. She had been at the beach with friends the previous weekend and got a bad sunburn. We were all seated around the large circular table in our kitchen: my brother at one end, heavily medicated, barely able to keep his head up, in pain and wondering if he’ll be able to see out of one eye. His girlfriend was at the table, too: complaining non-stop about her sunburn.

My family didn’t have room to hold her pain. It was hard for us to wrap our minds around her inability to see that we were dealing with something much more serious than she was. Yes, her sunburn was bad and deserved care and attention. Just not from us. We didn’t have the capacity to give her what she needed. Especially since she wasn’t showing up for what my brother was going through.

This experience stuck with me. I think of it a lot, especially when I, as a white woman, show up for racial justice and liberation, which is central to our work to end child sexual abuse and helping survivors live fully.

The sexual abuse I experienced as a child caused pain that has impacted many parts of my life and my family member’s lives. This pain deserves care and attention.

And my pain does not supersede the experiences of survivors of color. It is essential for me to have an awareness of the many forms of oppression that people of color experience–oppression that has come at the hands of people who look like me and that structurally benefit me and other people who look like me. As a white person, I have an opportunity to listen to people of color with an open mind and open heart. It is always an honor to strive to be a safe, trustworthy person, whose intention is to get to know someone as fully as they want to share. It is my responsibility to focus on supporting and loving a person whose face has been bashed in, instead of focusing on my sunburn.

I don’t always do this well. I always strive to do this better than before. And I always welcome feedback when my pain is blinding me to someone else’s.